Douglas Dive Bomber

[Tony Drago]

Pic from the Douglas plant in SO. Cal.

[FLOYD CARTER]

I toured the Douglas plant in Long Beach, CA during WWII. My mom worked there sitting at a bench filing on small castings.  Wasn't able to get up close to final assembly, but saw SBD wings being built.  Great picture!

[Dennis Leonhardi]

Absolutely love that airplane!  Beauty in looks and function.

Dave Platt’s SBD Dauntless: If I remember correctly, Dave’s model was awarded a perfect score in static judging at the 1968 Olathe Nats.  As it turned out, Dave was in the motel unit adjacent to us that year; really enjoyed talking with him.

A buddy & I happened across the models spread out for judging one morning.  I got down on my knees to especially look over the front end.  I was an “engine admirer” at the time, owned more than 300 of ‘em back then - but when I got up and my buddy asked “What does it have for an engine”, I answered :Oh my God, there’s an engine in there, isn’t there?”  I hadn’t even noticed what he was using, too overwhelmed by all the other detail.

A few years later, I was employed in a company where one of our managers had worked on them during WWII.  I covered the top and bottom of a model magazine with Dave’s Dauntless on the front cover and showed it to Ben.  He started pointing out areas where oil leaks and other issues often required work; when I uncovered the entire front of the magazine, Ben was absolutely shocked he had been looking at a model.

If you haven’t seen the History Channel Dogfight episode in which Stanley “Swede” Vejtasa battles 3 Japanese Zeros with his Dauntless for 25 minutes, shooting one down in the process, you’ve missed a masterpiece.

Vejtasa was quickly switched to the F4F Wildcat and was credited with downing 7 Japanese aircraft in a single mission during the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands.

Classic example of a good fighter pilot “using what ya got”!

[Dan McEntee]

   SBD: Slow But Deadly!   Lots of sexy fighter planes in the world, but the Dauntless is one f my favorite airplanes. I was late getting to work at the hobby shop one Sunday morning several years ago, because so e one had told me that there was a Dauntless making a stop at nearby Creve Coure Airport. I think it was the CAF airplane that was traveling to an airshow for static display and stopped for gas. I called the shop and told my boss that I was definitely going to be late, as I had never seen one in person, and if I didn't get a good look at this one I was most assuredly going t be sick!
  Type at you later,
   Dan McEntee

[FLOYD CARTER]

The Douglas SBD was the hero of the battle of Midway, which broke the back of the Imperial Navy.

[Gary Dowler]

An interesting structural note, the SBD (and presumably the SB2C) was designed to withstand a +13G load. The plane could survive far more than the crew could.

Gary

[Steve Helmick]

One of my early club (Eastside Model Aero Club) member buddies was Dave Woodcock (he set a bunch of Sr. Navy Carrier Records in the middle '60's). His father flew SBD's in WWII. On one mission, his plane got shot up pretty bad, and he climbed out on the wing, planning to bail. Something made him decide to fly it back and land on the carrier, after which he realized that his crotch strap on the parachute harness wasn't fastened (standard practice on carrier launches). If he'd jumped, he would have shot right through the harness and beat his 'chute to the ocean, and our intrepid CL Navy Carrier record setter would not have been born.  Steve

PS: No, I don't know if the gunner bailed out or not.